IPB forum software ver. 3.2.0 upgrade and incompatibility issues
Should you upgrade to this version?

Today I would like to post a somewhat small review of IP.Board's latest version of their popular forum software IPB.
For years IPB has lead the market place for having a quality product that almost everyone wanted to own as their forum software.
If you own or have owned this software, you know and understand the product line along with the in and outs of this family of products.
You have tested VBulletin along with the massive variety of free forum software, as we did.
In todays competitive market, you as a forum owner understand the you need every edge imaginable for you readers members and guests.
We here at NTH found IPB to be the best fit for our needs. With a few plug-ins installed, we were soon up and running with things set pretty much the way we want.
But don't get me wrong, no software out there will be exactly what you want. Including IPB
One nice thing about these forum software packages is, they have some great 1st and 3rd party add-ons. one of the best add-ons for IPB is a front page called Unreal Portal that works very well for our needs.
Most all website/forums out there has some sort of front/main entry page. Here is where things get very tricky.

IPB, unlike VBulletin does not have a front page content module. But we found a 3rd party add-on called Unreal Portal, that work very nicely with IPB. To combat the advantage that VBulletin had with there front page content content package (better known as a CMS, content management system), IPB introduced IP.Content. As a forum owner, we wanted to explore all options for a CMS for our site, so we tried IP.Content.
Much to our disappointment, IP.Content had very limited options for content management and ease of management was all but easy. Turns out, that in order to do what Unreal Portal or VBulletin does at a few clicks of the mouse, IP.Content does not. In fact, one needs to learn to write code in order to have something resembling UPortal. Yes code! HTML, CSS, PHP and more. I think I can honestly say, that the majority of forum software owners do not want to learn to write code. In fact, thats why they buy the software. Can you imagine you trying to write code to get your OS to function the way you want?
So, abandoning IB.Content, we decided to stay with UPortal and we like it.

But this is not the end, IP.Board recently released their new version of IP.Board, version 3.2.0. Here we are paying for update, license, support and access to the latest greatest product offering from IPB.
Warning to all IP.Board owners who are in the same category as us, before making any major changes or upgrades to IPB, run it on a test site first.
Moving along, before we do upgrades or modification, we always test it on our test bed, turns out a wise choice on this new IPB version.
We found a few problems. The main issue is the Portal! Seems this is always biting us on the A**. The current version of Uportal will not work on the new version of IPB. Oh, and if we went to IP.Content, it cost another $50 and doesn't work well. I checked with the folks over at Uportal and seems the problem is some codes and stats portion is incompatible with IPB 3.2.0. Not good for all those using IPB and Uportal.
Do Not Upgrade if this is your situation.
I have not heard back from Uportal on this issue as of yet and we refuse to try to make IP.Content work. We should not have to learn code or hire someone to make it functional. Not a good business model for IPB.
This leaves us with some decision making. Do we upgrade and loose what CMS we have for a limited version of a CMS (IP.Content)? Do we change forum software to VBulletin or something else (not easy)? Do we leave things as is and continue to pay for upgrades (that are not compatible)? Or do we just sit tight ( with current working version) and see if Uportal updates their mod to work with the new IP.Board 3.2.0?
This is what other forum owners will have to decide also.
We have made the decision to keep the current working version, sit tight, wait for Uportal, and pay for one more subscription term of upgrade and support. If noting is worked out by the time our subscription is up. we will in fact not renew our support subscription with IPB.
We will continue to use this version as long as we can without putting our members and security in jeopardy.

Conclusion:
We fell IPB is moving in the opposite direction from what once made it a great software.
Software development has moved from a user product to an IPB profits product. Meaning we will build what we want you to have, not what you want.
Having to learn code to have a functional CMS is unacceptable.
Not offering a compatibility list or checker before issuing upgrades is not very professional.
Do your homework before purchasing.